The postwar intellectuals’ view of “Asia”

In 1950, Shimizu Ikutarō, one of Japan’s most popular intellectuals, commented that, “now, once again, the Japanese are Asians.”1 For intellectuals disoriented by defeat and reduced to economic impoverishment, Japan was no longer one of the Western powers but merely one of the minor countries of “Asia.” From that point forward there emerged in modern Japanese history a repeated confrontation between competing inclinations to learn from the West and to reassess “Asia” and tradition. Having until now researched postMeiji theories of Japanese ethnicity (minzoku) and colonial policies, here I wish to concentrate on what “Asia” meant to postwar Japan’s “progressive intellectuals.”